I Left My Job

The title of this post is pretty straightforward. I left my job! I had been a contracted developer at AT&T for a little over a year and had done really well there and learned a lot. My last blog post was even about getting a promotion there. In terms of a first job in software engineering, it was definitely difficult, but I learned an incredible amount and I’m very thankful for my time there and what I learned. I was able to go into a full stack position where I knew none of their existing tech stack, and I learned it! I only knew Python and some Django going into my job, and I learned and used Perl, Javascript, HTML, CSS, jQuery, SQL, Ember, and probably a few other things I’m not thinking of at the moment. It was a really awesome job just in terms of learning a lot of new technologies.

I had been debating leaving AT&T for a few months, and finally decided to just take the leap. I put in notice a few weeks ago and had my last day this past Friday. I don’t have a dev job lined up, and I’m not actively looking for one! I’m really intrigued by the mobile market and want to work on some projects full time and see where and what they evolve into. I intend to spend a lot of time building out my portfolio in the coming months and learn some new technologies, and then really expand into my own products and just see where it goes.

I loved working at AT&T and learned so much, but it didn’t leave me a lot of creative juices left at the end of the day. I felt that by quitting and working on myself and my skillset full time, I could make massive strides in my career. I’m really intrigued to see what the future will bring, but so far things have been going really well.

In other news, I also accepted a position as a Teaching Assistant at UNC Coding Boot Camp! It came up pretty suddenly and was totally unplanned. I had already put in notice with AT&T when I got a recruiting email from them. Several interviews later, I started as a TA on Monday! It’s a part time program, so it is actually the perfect situation for me. I have lots of extra time to work on what I quit my job to do, but still have some set commitments to keep me honest. I intend to write a longer post about the TA gig, but suffice to say, I’m really really really excited about it.